The Girl with Braided Hair

Rasha Adly, Sarah Enany

Description

• The Girl with Braided Hair was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the “Arabic Booker”) under the title, Passion
  
• Based on actual historical events – Napoleon’s 1798 campaign in Egypt and his relationship with a young, local girl, Zeinab Bakry
  
• Accessible writing, plot-driven narrative that is both set in the past and modern day
  
• Strong female characters exploring what is means to be a woman and to live passionately in both historical and present-day Cairo
  
• Books on the art world have great appeal such as Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World, B.A. Shapiro’s The Muralist, and, of course, similar to The Girl with the Pearl Earring, this follows the life of the girl behind a painting
  
• Yasmin, Zainab, and other characters in their orbit, are on journeys in search of a sense of personal freedom, personal and artistic passion and inspiration; and their stories and motivations cross cultural, gender, and historical boundaries
  
• Bookstore galleys
  

Sujets

• historical
• Arabic
• Literary
• Women
• Pasión (película de 1982)
• Coming of Age
• Magreb
• Egipto
• Literature
• Painting
• Egypt
• General officer
• Woman
• Middle East
• Arabic language
• The Women
• Art
• General
• Maghreb
• Passion
• Cairo
• Booker
• Fiction
• Peinture

Informations

• Publié par: The American University in Cairo Press
• Date de parution: 03 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781649030474
• Langue: English

Extrait

Rasha Adly is an Egyptian writer, born in Cairo in 1972. She is a researcher and freelance lecturer in the history of art, and Cairo correspondent for the Emirates Culture magazine. She is the author of six novels, and The Girl with Braided Hair was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the Arabic Booker ) in 2018.

Sarah Enany is a literary translator and a professor in the English Department of Cairo University.
The Girl with Braided Hair


Rasha Adly




Translated by Sarah Enany
This electronic edition published in 2020 by Hoopoe 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt One Rockefeller Plaza, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10020 www.hoopoefiction.com
Hoopoe is an imprint of The American University in Cairo Press www.aucpress.com
Copyright © 2017 by Rasha Adly First published in Arabic in 2017 as Shaghaf by Arab Scientific Publishers Protected under the Berne Convention
English translation copyright © 2020 by Sarah Enany
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978 977 416 987 8 eISBN 978 164 903 047 4
Version 1
To everyone who has been defeated by life or had their dreams broken.
1
Cairo: Winter 2012 Yasmine arrived at work and headed straight for the Conservation Department. She put on a smock over her clothing, gloves and a mask, and sat down to continue with the painting that she had started work on a few days ago. She reached for it with great care, as it was ancient and all but falling apart. Watching her was Jean Simon, director of conservation at the Louvre, who had been appointed by the ministry especially to oversee and restore the priceless books damaged in the fire that had swept the Egyptian Scientific Institute in 2011. Noticing how nervous and careful she was being, he approached. “A true artist,” he observed. “What a shame that the painting has no identifying information.”
Yes, she responded. There are a lot of portraits out there of Egyptian faces, but there s something about this one that s different.
The director gazed thoughtfully at the painting. I believe it is the first time I have come across a work by this particular painter. I don t recognize his style or the characteristics of his brushstrokes. He took a breath. When an artist studies under a great master, frequently their brushstrokes will be similar, but this doesn t resemble anyone else s, not even any of the contemporary masters. He smiled. In any case, don t worry. When you re done with the preliminary conservation, we can do an infrared examination, and it may yield something.
As he left the room, her phone pinged with a message. She picked it up hurriedly. 2, Left Bank. I ll be there . Smiling, she put the device back in her pocket.
2
Sherif didn t expect her to text him back, no I m on the way or Sorry, I can t make it. He would just let her know where he was. Sometimes she came; sometimes she didn t.
They had met at a conference on architecture. He was an architect who owned his own company, a firm that specialized in building luxury hotels and mansions for the wealthy; she was a professor of art history who specialized in Renaissance, Baroque, and Neo-Baroque art, well-known in architectural circles as a consultant to major construction firms. She had been recommended to him by a consulting architect he usually worked with, who had been forced by illness to excuse himself from working on a project. She had received a phone call from Sherif some days later, asking her to oversee the plans for a new construction project in the Baroque style.
Their romance had lasted a year; he had loved her passionately, and she had whispered I love you into his ear a few times. Suddenly, like a light switch flipping off, her love had winked out, all her passion and desire for him gone. His eyes had always held a question; she always avoided answering it. One time he asked her straight out, Why did your feelings for me change?
She was truthful and cruel: There s someone else.
Strangely enough, he did not argue or blame her, but nodded and left. He knew that it was no use talking: he was experienced enough to know how labyrinthine and changeable the paths of human affection are. He also knew that he was not a skilled lover; he did not string together honeyed words, nor did he purchase gifts and flowers.
They met less frequently; the silence between phone calls stretched longer and longer. Tedium crept into their time together, and her feelings toward him cooled even further. Without realizing it, she had fallen in love with someone else. Oddly, that man did not return her love; he was, however, adept at the art of romance. The question remained, as it always does: should we stay with the one who loves us genuinely, though they be an inept romantic; or be with a master of romance, although they do not truly love us?
She had thought that love — and love only — makes puppets of us all, pulling our strings to take us where it will. However, with the other man, she had discovered that it was not necessary to love in order to woo someone. From the first, he had been honest with her: he told her he knew nothing of love, and could never tie himself down to one woman for the sake of something as worthy as love. Still, she pressed on, swept away by her feelings for him. Something about him attracted her, something charming and magnetic. She never did manage to put a name to it. Then she came to herself, as though slapped awake from a dream, when he told her he had found someone new, his voice ringing in her ears: I never promised you anything.
She went back to Sherif and cried on his shoulder. Generously, chivalrously, he listened. Don t ever blame yourself, he told her, if you genuinely loved him. Emotions are the most beautiful thing one can possess. He told her, It s enough that he lit the fire of love in you, even if he didn t intend it. Such feelings are rare. This is why we must be grateful to anyone who makes us feel them, ever. There are people who live out their lives in the illusion of eternal love, deliberately forgetting that love is the result of complex and changeable chemical reactions. What he said made sense to her — after all, she had loved him once, and it was over. Wasn t it?
3
The memory was replaying in Sherif s head when she walked in; she found him lost in thought, in another world. What are you thinking of? she asked.
He jerked up, fi nding her already in the seat opposite his. He smiled, You.
Oh? And what were you thinking?
He did not reply; she did not press him. From the way his eyes lit up at the sight of her, and the unsteadiness in his voice when he spoke her name, she could not doubt that he still loved her. It would have been cruel to twist the knife. They had not spoken of the subject since the last time they talked, when they sat facing each other at a café on a rainy winter day. Back then, he had asked her, Why have you changed so much?
It s because of you, she had responded truthfully.
How?
The way you love me, she explained, it s . . . the spark is gone. You re cold, and the cold is in us now, too. It s too long between calls and between dates. We meet at the same places, say the same words, order the same things. The logs in a fireplace need to be stirred up every once in a while so the flame will burn bright, but you ve let the fire go out.
It s funny, he had said, that you say ‘the way you love me. Isn t it enough that I love you?
No, she d replied, it s not.
Back then, he had not argued with her. Maybe, as she said, he was not adept enough at the ways of love, perhaps he didn t know how to keep his woman s heart aflame. When they parted that day, he had meant it to be for always; but she d called him weeks later, telling him she missed him and wanted to see him. Before she hung up, she had said, Sherif, I think my life was meant to have you in it. It wasn t about romance: their relationship had deepened to the point where her life was unimaginable without him. There was nothing in it for him but to fold his passions inside and play the part of the shoulder to cry on, the person to talk to. We all have someone like that in our life; sometimes we don t quite know what they are to us.
He ordered two espressos. When they arrived, he asked her how she d been. Her eyes glistened: he knew there was something important. I m working on an unsigned painting by an extraordinarily talented artist. What s strange is that the painting was never a success. It isn t well-known or famous at all, although it belongs in a top-tier art museum.
What I think, he said, is that the chance for success comes once in a lifetime. If you let it slip by, it s lost forever. He took a sip of his espresso. Be sure of it: opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
She appeared to catch his meaning, and so did not contradict him. Instead, she gave him the innocent smile he liked so much, the one that revealed her inner child. Was it only her smile he was fond of? He loved everything about her, from her large eyes and thick brows to her plump lips, loose, wavy hair, and shining bronzed skin. He loved the expressions on her face when she talked: her eyes had a way of widening and then narrowing, and unlike any woman he had known, her beauty came from her simplicity and her allure from her ingenuous nature.
They were used to sitting in comfortable silence; he enjoyed reading the language of her eyes, and she could read his body language in a nod or a lift of his eyebrows or the way he steepled his hands; so what